All Forum Posts by: Connie Chan

hey Jason, I use Tellusapp.com for rent collection and it does let me block partial payments. Agree with you it’s important if you get stuck in a bad eviction situation. It also has options for late fees and the tenants get rent receipts and notifications if they don’t select the AutoPay function. My mom and husband use it too, their tenants like the flexibility being able to pay by phone. There are also some cool features such as being able to rent room by room or the automatic rent roll and cash flow statements. 

@Andrew Faukner The answer varies by state and city but I agree with the other posters, this property manager doesn’t seem like he’s going to do a great job. That’s just a poor answer coming from any service provider where there are already all kinds of surveys that Zillow is at least a top 5 website for rental listings. In my opinion a good property manager gets your listing in as many places as possible AND does a spectacular job writing the best description and presenting it in the best possible way. There are so many services that even do that all for free (the app I use lists it on 16 sites for free) so if you’re paying a property manager and he can’t deliver on writing a good listing, then I have concerns he’s not going to be good at taking care of your property or responding to tenants either.

@Cameron Riley , yup! Telegram is a super popular messaging app and I use it to for friend chat. I think it's fairly popular among crypto investors, lol. 

I still prefer keeping tenant chat separate though -- it's just important to me for documentation reasons to not have it intermingled with my personal stuff. Also I don't know about you but I sometimes get the names of my tenants mixed up (especially the ones that I don't hear from often) so I prefer a rental specific chat so I can also see which unit they live in, how much they owe me, etc. 

One other thing to think about -- make sure telegram or whatever you decide on backs up everything. The reason iMessage didn't work for me (normal texts) is that when I switch phones I lose my old text messages. A friend of mine was once caught in a really bad position where an old tenant made up a story about his property manager not being responsive. The property manager had switched phones at that point and couldn't prove the communication. Thank goodness he had an old Apple backup of his iphone or else my friend would have lost the small claims court case. Basically just make sure the communication is backed up to the cloud automatically! 

Totally resonate with this one! My tenant once added me on What's App and started messaging me there. It felt strange to be honest because I use What'sApp to talk to friends and family, and I want to keep that separate. 

After that episode, I asked around a few landlord friends what they do. One friend of mine goes to an extreme length with a different email address for EACH rental unit and she screenshots her text conversations (that are via google voice), and emails them to herself and then describes the context of what they discussed. She does the email part so that the conversations are separated by unit. 

I know I don't have the discipline for that so I switched to Tellusapp.com to manage my rental chat. The app does what I need it to do and it includes read receipts, time stamp, group chat, sending pics/docs, etc. I've noticed a few things since switching over: the best part is that when tenants use the group chat feature they're all on the same page. So if the husband renter writes to me, I can write back and the wife renter will also see my message. Had to coordinate a sink maintenance issue recently and that helped a lot. The other thing I noticed was that the communication stayed professional (since it's written), but took on a friendlier tone which was nice. 

To me documentation of the conversation is really important. I don't want to be caught in a he said she said situation which is why I try to avoid phone calls. 

For 24 units I think Tellusapp.com will be a better fit than Appfolio. Appfolio is fully featured and I know lots of property managers that use it, but it has a minimum unit requirement of 50 units (which I am not at either!) and it also can cost a lot of money if you don't have that many units to spread the costs over. It's a good solution for managers with thousands of units.

There is also Yardi and Buildium and other bigger players but again I think those are a better fit for property managers with hundreds or even thousands of doors. I found them too complex for my needs. 

You might want to checkout Tellusapp.com, they do free tenant screenings. The website says it covers things like identity verification, income, credit, eviction history and even criminal records. I haven’t used it yet but have heard they have a partnership with Naborly that powers a lot of it. You can probably ask for a sample report, it sounds really comprehensive and the free aspect helps maximize the number of applicants. 

@Astrid Arevalo congrats!! Yes use real estate software from the get go so you have a system in place and all your docs in place. The one I use is tellusapp.com it has a listing service that lists on 15 sites but I haven’t used that feature yet so I can’t speak to it. Seems like it doesn’t hurt to get your listing out on more sources though. The app can do rent collection expense tracking screening and it’s all free, I like it a lot and recommend checking it out. Also listen to the bigger pockets podcasts! Use a professional lease like the bigger pockets one or the Tellusapp one, and most importantly always remember this is a business not a hobby. Don’t let emotions get in the way of choosing the best tenant.

@Emmett Ogiony I agree with all the other posters here. The downsides for this approach are not worth it. Life is all about creating the right incentives for the behavior you want. You don’t want your tenant to fix things themselves. You don’t want your tenant to not tell you about something that really should be fixed. You definitely don’t want the tenant to wait a few days before telling you about a problem just because it’s almost the end of the month. All of these create more liability and costly repairs for you down the line. My mom once had tenants that complained about all kinds of small problems. But they turned out to take care of the home the best out of anyone. They cared for it like their own home and kept it in pristine condition.

Tellusapp.com is the one I use. Main reason is the flexibility it offers me and my tenants. The tenant is able to switch from ACH bank transfer to credit card if they're having a hard time making rent that month, and then back. The ACH transfers are all free and the landlord is able to enforce late fees. I often end up waiving my late fees (my tenants are usually on time), and the platform lets me waive it which is also something I like. 

Like other users have stated, there are lots of options out there. For me I wanted something free, mobile, automatic that would give me notifications if a tenant paid or not and that's what led me to Tellus. I have heard good things about the other landlord specific options, too. The key is to choose something that's specifically made for rentals. Much higher chance those platforms have considered legal protections for you and ways to make sure your tenants don't avoid paying rent!

@Ace Alexander Issac Wesley good wuestion! The answer depends on more than the type of dwelling. But also what condition it’s in. For example a newly built home should have fewer rental expenses than say a home that’s 60 years old. So there isn’t a good source that will tell you everything. A friend of mine uses pro.com to get quotes just to have a sense of how much something will cost. Might be worth a try but again the costs are based on age of house, size of house, quality of build, etc.